You would have got long odds on Doukara being one of Leeds’ most important players this season.
With your first choice striker and talismanic goalscorer ruled out with injury, the last thing you want to see is a player with an average just shy of one in six limbering up to replace him. After all, you’d have been forgiven for not knowing Souleymane Doukara was still a Leeds United player just a few months ago.
For a while at least, it looked as if Doukara simply wasn’t worth the trouble. His aforementioned goalscoring record didn’t exactly justify keeping hold of a player banned for eight games for biting Fulham’s Fernando Amorebieta. He’s not exactly Luis Suarez, after all.
Yet, half a season after the shameful incident that seemed certain to bring the curtains unceremoniously down on his Elland Road career, the 25-year-old has emerged from the wilderness a different beast entirely.
After failing to start a single 2016/17 Championship fixture until mid-November against Norwich City, Doukara is now one of the first names on Gary Monk’s team sheet. He’s played from the first whistle in every game since, scoring against Rotherham, producing a sublime assist against Aston Villa and, most vitally of all, leading the line with tenacity and no little skill in Chris Wood’s absence against Reading.
From a player looking certain to depart in January, Doukara is now indispensable to Monk’s promotion ambitions.
And, although Chris Wood’s Boxing Day return against Preston is likely to relieve some of the pressure off the Senegalese’s shoulders, Doukara will more than likely drop back to the wing rather than the bench.
Leeds will just be praying that Senegal maintain his international exclusion ahead of the African Cup of Nations in the New Year. Doukara is yet to win a single international cap and, with a mammoth fixture schedule emerging over the horizon, Monk will be hoping that remains the case.
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